INTRODUCTION. 151 



more similarity in passing from blossom to blossom* 

 to the activity of some of our small waiblers, rapidly 

 examining the flowers of one plant and immediately 

 passing off to another, uttering, during the while, a 

 shrill and impatient call. Neither do the species per- 

 form extensive migrations, at least, where a con- 

 tinued flight has to be maintained. In the Old 

 World the change of station is chiefly from the town 

 and coast districts to the more exalted regions, where 

 it is possible a succession of food may be acquired ; 

 or if the range is more extensive, it is performed 

 over tracts, or coast- wise, where resting-places may 

 be found during its continuance. In both groups 

 the bill and the tongue are inserted into the tubes, 

 and withdraw from them the honey and the small 

 insects which are attracted by it. In both the me- 

 chanism of the tongue is in different manners 

 adapted for this mode of deriving nourishment, and 

 in both are the members of the family extremely 

 numerous, social in their habits, and probably in- 

 tended, in their respective countries, as one of ' the 

 means by which the sexes of many plants are intro- 

 duced to each other. Thus it is that we see design 

 in every part of the plan of Nature, and even its 

 frailest creatures dressed in a garb of splendour, 

 and, agreeable to all external senses, also made the 

 instruments, in a manner most simple, at the same 

 time essential to their own existence, of carrying on 



tracted from flowers, and partly on minute insects, flies, cica- 

 daricae, &c. Occasionally I have seen it snap at an insect in 

 the air." Jerdon's Cat., Madras Journ., 1839, et seq. 



